Vision for Slovakia

November began with an invasion of students from a Danish Bible college... From the very beginning our church has always placed a high priority on the work that we do with children and young people. Several members of our church are teenagers who have come in through the work we have been doing in the schools. It has been great to see some of these young people mature and take up responsibilities within the church. Last year however, because of the added responsibilities due to the growth of the church, we were unable to work much in the schools. The youth work, therefore, did not grow during this period.

For some time we have been eager to address this and return to working in the schools. We were therefore delighted when we received an email from a Danish Bible School offering to send a short term missions team.

The school is from Mariager in Denmark and has had a relationship with Slovakia for several years, regularly accepting Slovak students onto its courses. The students are aged from 18 upwards and normally attend courses from 1 to 4 years in length. The school is particularly strong in the areas of theology, music/worship, and mission. Having had first hand experience of mission teams from this college, when they had been to other cities in Slovakia, I was immediately certain that the trip would support the vision of the church here and gratefully accepted the offer.

The team stayed with us for 5 days and gave presentations in the schools through ACET, a Christian organisation who we regularly partner with. The presentations in the schools were about the important issue of bullying. The team, of 16 students and teachers, put together an excellent presentation which included songs, drama, personal life stories and multimedia presentations. Together, we spoke to students between the ages of 12 and 15 in every school in the city. The programme was thoroughly enjoyed by the pupils and also very well received by the teachers. The pupils were then invited to an evening programme at the church.

We had over 20 new young people attend the evening programme which consisted of fun and games followed by a concert, together with drama and an opportunity for the team to share their faith. Around half a dozen young people indicated that they wanted to know more about following Jesus and have since come to our regular youth meetings in which we are now running a discipleship course.

Thank you for all your prayers for this event and please continue to pray for those that have now joined us that their faith in Jesus will continue to grow. We are delighted that a couple of the young people who became Christians just over a year ago are already taking a prominent role in helping to lead the newcomers.

Please enjoy the video below which is a summary of the visit: